Claiming Civic Virtue

Among communities in the Mara region of Tanzania, it is considered mens responsibility to maintain history. But when Jan Bender Shetlers questions turned to specific familial connections within the village, she discovered her male informants had to occasionally leave the roomto ask their wives for clarification. The result is an original and wide-ranging investigation of the gendered nature of historical memory and its influence on the development of the region over the past 150 years. Shetlers exploration of these oral traditions and histories opens exciting new vistas for understanding how women and men in this culture tell their stories and assert their roles as public intellectualswith important implications for research in African and gender studies, and the history of ethnicity and nationalism.